This beer has the coolest beer name of all time. Black and low carbonation. Very smooth palate. Aroma and flavor is mild coffee, served cold. Thanks to Skyview for shaing.

Suprise find at Tanakaya. Good looking copper with a big ’ol fluffy tan head. Grapefruit, pine, earth tones, and a caramel backbone. Could use a bit more in the aroma, but definitly the makings of an American IPA. Smooth and full bodied. Flavor is solid, but a little less than I was hoping for. Grapefruit and citrus, pine notes, resin, and the caramel malts are hanging in there, as well. Nicely bitter in the end, not the hop punch of the west coast. I was dissapointed at first, but warmed up to this IPA.

Bottled. A hazy amber beer with a lazing light orange head. The aroma is sweet with notes of straw and hops. The flavor has notes of straw, spices, and dusty hops on a powerful sweet malty background.

Thanks to goldtwins for sharing - cloudy golden, with a small, fizzy head - flowery aroma, with honey, european hop character, musty wheatiness - semi-sweet, with a dry kick that works somewhat well with the floral notes - some soft peach and faint wheat - the floral and fruit notes don’t quite work with the wheat - decent enough.

Thanks to goldtwins for bringing this to JoeMcphee’s place for CaptainCougar come to NY gathering. Dark golden, thick looking and medium clarity. Aroma is cat pee, sweet in general with apple. Strong and sweet. Taste is bitter grass backed with a strong lager-sweetness, weird, and ehhh. Just a weird strong pils, not vibing with me.

Thanks to goldtwins for bringing this to JoeMcphee’s place for CaptainCougar come to NY gathering. Pours thick pale yellow, very thick looking, no clarity. Aroma is very sweet, candy sweetness, and some spice wheatiness. Taste is lightly sweet and over the top phenols. Kind of off balanced and over the top.

Thanks to goldtwins for sharing - cloudy orange beer with a foamy head - orange marmalade and herbal tea aroma, with strong honey and flower notes - overly sweet, orange blossom honey flavor - hops come on strong to crush the initial sweetness, but don’t integrate well with the sweetness, fruity notes and floral flavors, making the beer, at times, remind me of scented soaps - needs more balance.

Bomber drunk on 7/8/07
Pale-golden body with a bit of bright copper tints and a very frothy, large, slow-to-recede white head that provides ample lacing. High clarity and countless streams of tiny bubbles rising.
A lot more melon than I was expecting, not that that’s a bad thing, with bold pine resin and white grapefruit bitterness rounding it out. Definitely some crude yeast and hop stink, however, though that’s almost inevitable at this level. Malts are soft, quite deep and help make this bearable in the nose, without adding too much sweetness. Fruitiness perks up somewhat, as it warms, which is a nice suggestion, adding cherries, magoes and such. Alcohol warmth is perceived, with a bit of a perfumey bite to it on the finish, but it’s nothing overly disruptive. Medium-high strength of aroma.
I guess the idea was to make this huge and over-the-top, so you can’t really fault the brewer for producing, what I feel, is a beer that would be certainly much better with about 2/3 the alcohol and hop bitterness, but it still makes for quite a fatigued palate by the finish. Pine and heavy grapefruit, with some floral suggestions and light peach-mango. Very expansive, yet tight carbonation gives it a creamy mouthfeel and soft, supple malts further aid the texture. Hop acids begin to burn, on the finish, and it gets estery and very dry/nearly-astringent. But for the crude yeastiness and overly bitter, grapefruit/pine dominant hoppiness, it’s a pretty strong success for this abv and IBU content. As always, though, beers like this seem more a novelty/challenge for the brewer than a true attempt at something really well-made. Man, Ernest would absolutely hate this beer!

Bomber drunk on 6/28/07
Very nice to see that this one (unlike the monks mistress cabernet) actually produces a large, resilient head (dark beige in color) that is very slow to recede and laces lightly. The mahogany brown liquid has slight auburn hints and shows a medium-high clarity and plentiful carbonation.
Hmmm, that’s definitely bourbon in the nose. Spicy and well attached to the dark malts, which give it a sort of vanilla-cola sort of feel. Sharp wood notes and some alcohol heat round out the picture, with a light fruitiness playing about in the background. Not quite as lively as the base beer, with the wood and bourbon morphing the more lighthearted esters in to a sort of black cherry-meets-black pepper note that is decidedly less suited to a Belgian beer (IMHO). Still, I’ll certainly agree that this isnt as egregiously over-barreled as the cabernet version, which practically beat you to death with the wine character. Strong, lasting aroma, and quite thick to-boot, the strength of the bourbon and the underlying maltiness seeing to that, no doubt.
Heavily carbonated texture (though moderately tight) leads to a very, very creamy and full-bodied beer, with streaks of dry chocolate running from start to finish and interacting with oily wood tannins, clove, cinnamon and vanilla bourbon notes to produce a very well-homogenized flavor that still preserves the dry, wondrously fruity character of the base beer, to some extent. Light hints of chewy caramel stick to the palate and the alcohol warmth and bourbon character slowly gain steam, eventually overwhelming my palate (with help from the acidity present in the beer). Dates and raisins, with more oiliness emerge with warmth, and the malt sweetness grows in girth (this beer is very sweet when young and though it’s been aged, it still seems to be a sweeter batch, perhaps purposefully). While the bourbon isnt nearly as overpowering here, I still think it’s slightly overdone and seems to insert itself in to all aspects of the beer. Perhaps another 6 months and some of the sweetness will subside, though I wonder where that will leave the bourbon flavor (perhaps even more in control).